7 réponses à ce sujet

[Maria Caliban]

I'd appreciate it. I know you're busy and don't mean to bother you, but I've been wondering...

1) I know you've written Samara and Liara (great job on both) for ME 3. Did you do any other characters or quests?

2) Mass Effect has a very cinematic style, how do the writers, cinematic people, and voice actors interact? Do you just do a regular script with dialogue? Do you put any notes as to actions or gestures? Do you ever do any of your own storyboarding? Do the artists ever ask you opinion on concept art for various characters or show you the work in progress?

You said you were there when Maggie Baird (Samara) did her recordings. Are you just there to make sure everything fits, or does the actor or VA director ask for your opinion on different takes?

3) Favorite pastry?

4) What was the hardest part of working on ME 3? What's your favorite scene you worked on?


Lastly...
5) How do you pronounce your last name?

Again, I'm just curious and understand if you don't answer.

[Sylvf]

Hi there. I'd be glad to respond later today/tomorrow (got to see where my time goes). Just letting you know I see the thread!

[Sylvf]

1) I know you've written Samara and Liara (great job on both) for ME 3. Did you do any other characters or quests?

Thanks. Here’s a brief list of what I’m responsible for (Spoilers in the form of mission names and reappearing characters, for those who haven’t finished ME3):

-In addition to the Monastery and Samara, the “Geth Consensus” and the “Rescue the Admiral” missions on Rannoch.

-Legion’s investigate conversation (the conversation you can keep returning to) on the Normandy.

-Everything Glyph chirps at you.

-Liara on the Normandy, Citadel, and London (Except the Matriarch Aethyta scene, and the clash between Liara and Javik post-Thessia. Those were Patrick Weekes and John Dombrow respectively.)

-About 1/3rd to 1/4th of the Citadel (Including Refund Guy and the Shepard VI. My finest hour.)

-All of the Galaxy At War asset descriptions, some planet descriptions (1/3rd to 1/4th of them?), more than half of the new gun descriptions, the e-mails and intel in Liara’s cabin, new armor descriptions, descriptions of those poetry books in the hospital gift shop...

Writers migrate over to systems like this once the bulk of dialogue creation is over.

2) Mass Effect has a very cinematic style, how do the writers, cinematic people, and voice actors interact? Do you just do a regular script with dialogue? Do you put any notes as to actions or gestures? Do you ever do any of your own storyboarding?

It involves a lot of collaboration. Once our conversations are at the point where we can give them to our cinematic designers, they begin creating what you see in the game. This doesn’t mean lines are set in stone, but they at least have a base dialogue to work with.

Conversations have staging notes, but we talk a lot with cinematic design because they have great ideas on how to create and improve the scenes. This is the point where we make a lot of suggestions on each others’ work. I love bouncing ideas off other people, that’s when the conversations really start coming to life.

Do the artists ever ask you opinion on concept art for various characters or show you the work in progress?

I actually didn’t write anyone who required a new character concept. I spoke more with the level artists/designers about level art. (If it’s not too much of a boast, I think the game’s missions look spectacular thanks to them.)

You said you were there when Maggie Baird (Samara) did her recordings. Are you just there to make sure everything fits, or does the actor or VA director ask for your opinion on different takes?

They do. If I’m at a recording session however, my most useful role is providing context. We give our actors notes but not only are they working without a set, they’re reading from non-linear scripts because of how our dialogue splits. (To me that makes their work even more amazing.)

3) Favorite pastry?

Portuguese Egg Tarts.

4) What was the hardest part of working on ME 3? What's your favorite scene you worked on?

One of the most difficult things I had to learn were expositional techniques. It’s hard to drip-feed just the right amount without being talky, boring, or confusing. A lot of my earliest revisions were focused on finding ways to collapse down or simplify exposition not crucial to the story.

It’s hard to pick a favorite scene. I’m especially fond of some of the work in the Geth Consensus, though, and the confrontation with Legion after you pop back into the real world. I was also very pleased with how well Liara and the time capsule turned out. That’s a scene I knew I wanted to write fairly early on in the project.

Lastly...
5) How do you pronounce your last name?

I have to retain some mystery. : )

Sylvf wrote Liara for Shadow Broker and Mass Effect 3. Chris L'Etoile wrote her for ME 1. Not sure who wrote her for ME 2. Maybe Mac as he did the comic as well?

To be more precise, I wrote Liara for most of the assault on the Shadow Broker base, but only did a few lines of her dialogue after you return to the base. I DID write all of Feron and Glyph. I don’t believe Mac wrote Liara in ME2 (not sure who did). I also don’t believe Chris L’Etoile wrote her in ME1.

Splitting out who wrote what in our games can get really complicated…

[Edit: I keep noticing typos...]

Modifié par Sylvf, 30 mars 2012 - 05:45 .

[Sylvf]

Thanks for the kind words, all! Glad you enjoyed.

P.S. Does anyone know who wrote Garrus and Javik?

They were both written by John Dombrow in ME3 (With the exception of the Eden Prime mission, where you recruit Javik. That was Patrick Weekes). You may recognize John as the writer on the ME2 DLC, Overlord.

Modifié par Sylvf, 17 mars 2012 - 10:43 .

[Sylvf]

I'd like to thank you all again for the kind words. They're very flattering!

LadyofRivendell wrote...

And just while we're on the subject of writing, what about Shepard? Was that a collaborative effort on everyone's part, or just one person?

Whoever writes a particular dialogue writes Shepard's lines as well. Mac W and our editors oversee Shepard's tone when they do passes on our writing, to ensure his/her voice remains consistent.

gearseffect wrote...

So you wrote Samara ME3? Can you PLEASE share if there is any more to come from her? Any more scripts to finish her romance that was left very unfinished in ME3? I mean that's the one thing I wanted to have resolved from ME2 in ME3 and it never was resolved!

I wasn’t a writer on ME2, but as far as I know the never-to-be-requited attraction in ME2 was all that was ever planned in terms of a romantic relationship with Samara. She does acknowledge that it happened in a small way, however. There's one line in ME3, at the end of her conversation on the Citadel, that changes if Shepard tried to start a relationship with Samara in ME2.

HBC Dresden wrote...

Thank you Sylvf and the other writers involved, I really loved the lore and how your choices mattered on the Tuchanka and Rannoch missions (must have been fun and difficult writing that dialogue, depending on what happened in ME2)

It was! One thing that was actually really fun to write was the version of Legion who died in ME2 and didn’t remember Shepard, while Shepard remembered it perfectly. I enjoyed that dynamic a lot.

Modifié par Sylvf, 27 mars 2012 - 06:51 .

[Sylvf]

Asperius wrote...

Thanks for insight, info and hard work Sylvf.

I guess I should thank you for unforgetable Liara's gift? For me that scene is most amazing representation of friendship.

Also thanks for awesome monastery mission. I love Kaidan's "Sorry, I tripped" line on that quest. Other than that it is only mission pass full emotion even without tied character (Samara).

Any future projects you are working on currently? Not fishing for spoilers or anything. Just want to know if I can see your work in future projects (like Dragon Age 3 maybe?).

Glad you liked them, thanks! I can't state what I'm working on, but I am currently on the Dragon Age franchise team.

EDIT: Oh man, I fussed with this after someone quoted it. Now everyone will know I continually tweak my posts!

Modifié par Sylvf, 27 mars 2012 - 06:58 .

[Sylvf]

DaBigDragon wrote...

Will the Liara romance bug be fixed?

I know we already discussed this one, but I thought it would be OK to repeat it here for anyone curious. The bug occurs on a line during Liara's first conversation on the Normandy, that's supposed to check for the LotSB date-scene kiss . It defaults to the line you get if you romanced Liara in ME1, but didn't rekindle things in LotSB. It's a known bug, but I'm afraid I can't guarantee that it will be fixed. The only fortunate thing, really, is that the bug is retricted to a single line.

[Sylvf]

Answering a question from this thread here, so I don’t throw the other thread too off-topic. 

 

en2ym3 wrote...

Do you know how writing works in the video game industry - as in, is it different anymore now than in past, or is it very much different in other game companies?   How do deadlines and all that work?  The only thing I really know is that, for Bioware, you guys would usually work on (a) specific thing(s), then get peer reviewed by the team (correct me if I'm wrong).

You’re correct on that last one. After we write out initial story drafts, we go through a peer review process with the other writers and a few other people involved in crafting our dialogue. We’re the start of production, so we have to
watch our deadlines – we can stall a lot of other departments if we’re not on top of things. As for the rest of the industry, BioWare's the only videogame developer I've worked at, so I can't really comment directly on writing practices at other studios.

Regarding your question about the past, there’s a lot of games now whose mission statement seems to be telling a compelling story. You don’t necessarily need a ton of dialogue to do so, but there appears to be more writers around. Or at least people whose main job is writing. Sometimes trying to find out who did the script for an older game is nearly impossible, if it was written by someone on the dev team whose main job was programmer/designer/artist/etc...

I've sort of been extra curious as to the details of it once I read some comments on how voice acting in a game makes it more difficult for the writers, due to the fact that the lines are more set in stone after you get the actor to read their given lines.

We definitely have to be mindful of how many times we can get an actor into the booth to record lines. After their time is up, we have to start getting creative with dialogue changes (cutting words, changing or adding shots, etc...) I’ve only ever written for games that have voiced dialogue though, so I’m used to that constraint. And there’s an upside: When the voice acting does come back, it’s so exciting to hear how the character sounds. Nothing brings a personality to life like, well, a person.

Modifié par Sylvf, 11 août 2012 - 08:23 .